2023-2025 Strategic Plan

The Board of Directors of the Summerville Family Health Team is pleased to present our new 2023 – 2025 Strategic Plan!

Summerville Family Health Team was established in 2007, as one of the first Family Health Teams in Ontario, and currently supports more than 50,000 patients. In November 2021, the Summerville Board formed a Strategic Planning subcommittee to develop our third Strategic Plan, which would cover the period from 2023 to 2025.

The process for the development of the new Strategic Plan included a variety of focus groups with a selection of staff and physicians from all five sites, an online survey for all team members, external outreach including patient focus groups and an online survey, and external stakeholder interviews.

The overall consensus from the input gathered was that the existing Mission/Vision/Values are still relevant and that the Strategic Priorities remain significant. The main areas for modification would be the objectives under each priority.  Much of the feedback, both internally and externally, reflected that Summerville had made great progress from the previous Strategic Plan and should continue to build on these strengths. Some of the common themes for areas of focus include: improved access to services, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (EDI), community outreach, staff wellness, youth and mental health, workload, digitization with improved use of technology and FHT/FHO collaboration.

There were also varied perspectives among internal stakeholders, with respect to  the priority of strengthening our own team, especially after dealing with the pandemic, and the priority to continue serving the broader community and being an active partner in our local Ontario Health Team. Both were viewed as important to Summerville’s success.

The external interviews also mirrored these themes and provided additional input with respect to the future of health care. Other areas of focus mentioned included health equity, virtual care, pandemic recovery and keeping patients out of hospitals and emergency rooms. The overall advice was to not only continue to strengthen our own organization coming out of the pandemic, but also to connect with the broader community to address health equity and population-based approaches.

As a result, the overall theme for Summerville’s new Strategic Plan is “internally strong, externally relevant”.  The Vision has been simplified to reflect our overall goal of being “Vital to the Community We Serve” and the Mission and Values have been modified to reflect a greater emphasis on equity and inclusion, as well as centering on people as a whole, as opposed to just patients. While the Strategic Priorities remain the same, new or modified objectives and metrics have been included to reflect the themes noted above.

You may download your own copy at the link below this visual.